Whatever My Lot - Thou Hast Taught Me To Say

As a child, peace was defined by that moment when night fell silent and the sky lifted her skirt to reveal a breathless expanse of forever - clouds inhaling to dissipate - painting my view with an infinite glimpse of possibility. All those stars. All those wishes reflecting, winking, daring.

The best was in the old police cruiser - the old, dark Oldsmobile repurposed for family travel - the one where dad found the drugs tucked down between the seats - the one with the huge back bench that meant I barely had to touch my little sisters. That one was the best. Tires would crunch along the pocks of highway spewing it's yellow ribbon into a map to magic and night would creep around us and hitch up tight against our margins and the clock might turn past bedtime and the radio rarely played and silence was golden and we were too tired to sing 'Father Abraham' one more time and I would scooch back tall and let my hair rest wild across the rear dash and gaze out through that wide screen window at that HD sky. Often, the highway would reflect upon the window, perforating my view with a vision of traveling backwards, that dashed line zipping across my vision like a hypnosis - arbitrarily shooting across the heavens and I thought, if only that yellow line caught the trajectory of a shooting star, surely then my wish might come true. And I thought I could exist there forever - gazing up at this proof of creation, wrapped up in the monotony of an engine and the soft breathing of my sister who would fall head-heavy asleep beside me and the way my father would reach across and take my mothers hand and naming the stars for the way they made me feel and how emptiness and silence made me smooth and soft and so, so safe. And I thought I could exist there forever.

And I want nothing more than to return. To be, once again, blessed with that peace like a river because my soul needs attending and I don't seem to find it in this busy crapped up mess that bubbles up wild. There are moments it feels like this hope I'm clinging to is not but a gossamer thread and to put my faith in it is to break it and to break it is to drown.

Don't misunderstand me - I am surrounded by blessings that I count and cherish every single day. But I am also in garbage and garbage reeks of apathy and it really, really means something to actually give a damn about it all.

So I will. I will take that gossamer thread and I will knot it and braid it and tie it and twist it and trust it so radically that it is remade in the image of beauty. I will not be defined by the ugly. I cannot cast my burdens on this home that nearly bursts with wanting me to step beyond the shadows that follow me here. I will lay my head wild upon the proverbial rear dash and mediate on the peace of all those stars and whatever my lot...it will be well with my soul.

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MEET ALANNA

Alanna lives on a small patch of untameable land in mid-western Ontario with her three children, husband, and an overweight cat. Fuelled by copious amounts of tea and chocolate, she writes fiction and creative non-fiction from within her tiny study.

Our washing machine died. It was like any sudden death. Unexpected and uninvited. It croaked and I stood in front of it like the left-behin...

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